Cries for help from befuddled personal computer software users will no longer go unanswered according to Help Desk Express, which has set up a helpline for the despairing. The despairing includes anyone prepared to pay for the service – legimate software users or not. Help Desk is a bit like The Samaritans for personal computer users and comes complete with a Freefone number. Subscription, however, costs UKP200 per year – after which users can phone up as much as they like. Any questions relating to software are considered, from how to save a file, to importing files from one package to another. And no identification of the legitimacy of the software is neccessary, so those using cut-price pirated packages can obtain the same benefits that legimate users get free from software vendors but which are presumably built in to the legal price of the software. In total 27 applications are supported, mostly word processing and spreadsheet packages. Help Desk reckons that even legitimate users with access to vendors’ free helpline services can benefit from the package, arguing that its database also covers situations where more than one application is being used, and that most users don’t bother to phone the vendors anyway because of constantly busy lines. At the moment it has just four people manning the phones, but says the number will increase as the service catches on. The list of packages supported includes dBase III and IV, Lotus 1-2-3 and PageMaker. Help Desk insists that rather than supplanting vendor services and in-house support desks, it complements them. Managing director Nik Jackson says that often the calls dealt with are not technical but operational, and are therefore believed too trivial to waste technician’s time. The company was set up 18 months ago with private funds, by Jackson and co-director Paul Coombes. They bought the rights to the database from an American company, Micro Support Resources. Running on an IBM System 36, the database contains the questions and answers of 40,000 queries, built up by Micro Support over five years.
